Via Felix Salmon, here’s a chart put together by economists Gordon Green and John Coder, based on data from the monthly Current Population Survey. It’s an index of self-reported income over the past 12 months and it’s bad, bad, bad. As you can see, median incomes plummeted during the recession, and as you can also see, incomes continued to plummet during our so-called recovery. Reported income is now down 10% from 2008 levels. More here from the New York Times, including this pithy comment from Princeton economist Henry Farber: “As a labor economist, I do not think the recession has ended.”
Indeed not, though perhaps economists who don’t care about labor will disagree. In any case, here’s your economics lesson for the day: debt implosion —> reduced spending —> layoffs and wage cuts —> plummeting incomes —> even less spending, more layoffs and wage cuts, and ever lower incomes —> Zuccotti Park. Republicans and centrist Democrats, please take note.
